Reporter's notebook: How I found out Zuckerberg was buying out his neighbors

When I stumbled onto the eye-popping price of a house in Palo Alto earlier this month, I knew something was up. Why would someone pay $14.5 million for a 2,600-square-foot home on a relatively small lot, even in pricey Palo Alto?

So I called Alex Comsa, a Palo Alto Realtor with Intero Prestigio who specializes in that market’s luxury homes. All I had to do was tell him the street.

Very close indeed. A little more digging revealed a trend: The same mystery buyer — likely Zuckerberg, based on public records — had bought four of five parcels immediately surrounding the Facebook CEO’s pad. Hours after the Business Journal published a story Wednesday night, the Mercury News was on the case: Zuckerberg, the paper reported Thursday night, was worried about potential development near his home. The storyline – Zuck buying out his neighbors to gain control and privacy protection – went viral. Call it the Zucker-burgh.

The sellers made out darn well. The first home, directly behind Zuckerberg’s Hamilton Avenue house, sold late last year for $4.8 million. That home was in contract to a custom homebuilder planning a teardown when Zuck’s group swooped in, I’m told by very knowledgeable sources.

Things heated up in September, when Zuck’s next-door neighbor sold for $10.5 million. Two homes in back of the Zuckerberg house sold in early October. One for $14.5 million, the other price was undislosed. Those prices are way above market trends for Palo Alto’s desirable Crescent Park area, Comsa told me.

It’s unclear when (or whether) the final domino will fall – that final homeowner didn’t return calls. Before publishing, I stopped by the homes that sold, but people who answered doors declined to talk to me.

“I think a lot of people are kind of proud he’s there,” said Norman Beamer, who heads up the Crescent Park Neighborhood Association, “I can’t speak for the whole neighborhood, but I get the sense it’s a prestige type of thing that rebounds to the benefit of the neighborhood.”